Polls

With the announcement and unveiling out of the way, along with all of the details made public that you might need to make an informed decision, what’s your take on the OnePlus 3? Going to pick one up? Maybe wait for official Moto Z pricing, or maybe new a Nexus later this year?

One could argue quite a few points to either purchase or not purchase this phone, but when it comes down to it, the OnePlus 3 is quite the smartphone package at just $399. The fact that OP decided to skip the invite system completely makes it all the more attractive, too. The company added in NFC, gave us a top-tier applications processor, 6GB of RAM, UFS 2.0, and even that awesome Alert Slider. On the downside, there’s no water resistance, expandable storage, wireless charging, or Verizon/Sprint support.

Our final take is, yes, we will definitely give this phone a shot. How about you?

Tomorrow is a pretty big day for Moto(rola) and Lenovo. During the keynote of Lenovo’s Tech World conference in San Francisco (watch it here), Moto will get a chance to shine on stage as they unveil what we expect to be their next flagship phone, the Moto Z.

From what we have seen through a variety of leaks, the phone will take on new design language, ditch the “X” branding, and attempt to make modularity in a phone a real thing, something LG couldn’t do with the G5. At first leak, we weren’t exactly all that impressed by the Moto Z’s design, but have admitted to warming to it and maybe even becoming quite fond of it. As you guys know, I’m also excited to see companies like Lenovo and Moto taking chances with things like modules, because innovation doesn’t happen if everyone just place it safe. (more…)

VR, whether you are ready for it or not, is about to be everywhere. What’s that? You thought it already was? Honestly, I don’t think the big VR push has really even begun yet. Sure, we talk a lot about it because a bunch of big name companies are talking about it and it seems to be the next big focus, but a world filled with VR is really only in its infancy, if not pre-infancy.

I say that because the biggest player right now, is Samsung, with its mobile-powered Gear VR headset. Companies with big, stand-alone, PC-powered units, like HTC and Oculus, are just now entering with their more powerful options. Plus, Google has barely finished off announcing its VR platform for Android and Apple hasn’t said a word yet. Samsung should be given lots of credit for being one of the first out of the gate, but when you talk about all of these other players on the verge of entering the game, this really is only the early stages of the beginning.

Still, that doesn’t mean many of you haven’t already jumped into VR. You could have purchased (or been given as a bonus gift) a Gear VR, dropped hundreds on Vive or Rift, or picked up Google Cardboard for a couple of bucks at this point. And that’s where we go for today’s poll. Even though we asked you back in January if you were at all interested in VR (52% said “no”), we now want to know how many of you are already invested in the fun.

Since there is no shortage of options for keyboard apps on Google Play, it seems that no matter who I talk to, everyone is using something different. For me, the standard Google Keyboard works great. I especially love the custom photos I can use to theme it. More importantly, though, the swipe functionality on Google Keyboard seems very accurate more times than not, which saves me time during typing and also allows me to use one hand.

Other people, known as peckers, prefer to type each individual letter in a word. These people don’t care about saving time and would much rather watch the whole world go up in flames than to swipe out words on their keyboard. Don’t worry, only kidding. Peckers would argue that swiping words out is not as accurate as they would like, plus with auto-correct becoming better over the years, the words that they peck out are usually spot on which saves them time from redoing a swipe.

Way back in the day, Android widgets were my thing. I rocked Beautiful Widgets, a Gmail widget, DashClock, Sound Search widget, and a few more that I can’t recall right off. These days, I feel old and lame, using a single widget from the stock Clock app on my phone. It’s not very cool.

Times have changed, I suppose. I don’t feel the need to have all of that information cluttering my home screen, and instead, I was a minimalistic look with quick access to the apps I frequently use. It might have also been the performance drag some widgets caused due to improper optimizations made for Android. Whatever the cause was, at this point, I’m over widgets.

Tell us, do you still widgets? If so, which ones can’t you live without?

In the early days, we talked about Chromebooks not being powerful enough and lacking the utilities many of us needed to get by on most days. With Android apps, that could (and should) all change, since Google Play includes an app for just about every single one of our favorite PC services.

Obviously, I think this is a huge deal and will take a great deal of time to test out the new functionality once it arrives, but I’m curious to know what the majority of you are thinking now. Are Android apps on Chromebooks enough to get you to buy one? If not, why?

Google I/O 2016 is far from over and we have much more to cover, but after the blockbuster keynote from yesterday wrapped and we took the rest of the day to digest all that was announced, we want to know what impressed you the most.

Were you blown away by Google Home or Assistant? Does Daydream live up to all of your VR dreams? Are you ready to adopt Allo as your next messaging client and ditch Hangouts? Maybe you just care about the stable-enough Android N Developer Preview 3 that was released? Something else stuck out, perhaps?

About Droid Life

We consider ourselves to have the greatest Android community in the world, here at Droid Life. We talk general news, feature apps, review phones, and even teach you how to hack a little. But most importantly, there is no place on the internet that has the reader participation that we do and consider ourselves to be completely community driven. If you were looking for the best place to learn about Android and talk with like-minded folks about all things tech, then Droid Life is for you.